Mebane’s city council was not impressed with a developer’s plans to change the city’s zoning for a 14-acre lot to allow 120 apartments along South Eleventh Street on the Orange County side of the city in lieu of 51 townhouses that had been approved five years ago.
The townhouses had been approved in August 2021, at the same time that an adjacent rezoning on eight acres had been approved for 48 apartments.
The 120 new apartments (five, three-story buildings with 24 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments in each) were scheduled to be similar in look to the three, two-story buildings just down the street, Robin McAdoo of TMTLA Associates, the developer of both apartment complexes, told the planning board last month.
The apartment complex amenities were to include a pocket park, dog park, pavilion with a BBQ grills, volleyball court, multiuse play area, and a community building, as plans were outlined to the council last week and to the planning board last month.
The developer had proposed to pay Mebane $112,342 in lieu of providing public recreation space; there would be 3.68 acres of private recreation space.
Mayor pro tem Tim Bradley was the most outspoken in questioning the new plans. “It’s not exactly an exciting proposal to me,” Bradley said, saying that the plans proposed to “double the density in an area that’s already dense.”
Bradley questioned the layout of the five proposed apartment buildings, which he described as being “jammed “ on the left side of the lot, while much of the parking was “stuck” elsewhere, farther away from the apartment buildings on the other side of the lot.
Likewise, council member Katie Burk-holder, who said she was “struggling” with the plans, noted that each building had parking spaces in front of each building only for the exact number of apartments, 24, in each. Any additional residents in the two- or three-bedroom apartments would have to park farther away, she observed, or it would create competition for the 24 spaces.
While the planning board had recommended in favor of the rezoning, the council disagreed. Councilman Jonathan White ultimately made a motion to deny the rezoning, which was adopted unanimously by the council, 5-0.
Voting for the denial were White, Bradley, Burkholder, and council members Sean Ewing and Montrena Hadley.
